Wireless messaging systems such as paging systems have undergone significant changes in the past 20 years. Early paging units were simple radio receivers that beeped upon receipt of a paging signal from a paging service. With advancements in paging technology, it became possible to send message data to a paging unit. This message data could include alphanumeric messages. For example, a paging message could tell the user to call home, call the office, stop by the dry cleaners, etc. An increasing percentage of the information transmitted through these paging systems began coming from computerized sources, rather than through telephone numeric keypad entry. Such messages were entered as text into specialized computer programs that were only used for sending messages to pagers.
More recently, paging devices have been undergoing a revolution. New features in pagers include the ability to: accept binary data as well as text or numbers; transmit messages back to the caller; and be embedded into machines, such as a vending machine that can signal a home base on its own initiative when it is in need of servicing. Now technology is being developed to allow paging messages to come from sources such as E-mail or the World Wide Web.
In order for a separate system such as E-mail or the World Wide Web to be connected to a wireless messaging infrastructure that is used by the paging system, a computer software application must be developed to facilitate the flow of information between the two systems. The computer software application is run on an application platform that includes all of the hardware and supplemental software needed to run the application. Developers who wish to write such applications face many obstacles. For example, to write an application a developer may be required to know all of the coding formats that are being used over the air in the wireless messaging system and the types of pagers that are being used. Additional complexity has been added by the vast numbers of existing programs, computer platforms, and user interfaces that currently exist for paging systems.
While solutions have been developed for many of these problems, one problem in particular that has plagued application developers has been the task of developing application databases. Application databases are included in the application platform and store information required by the application; for example, a given application may need access to message information such as: the date and time that a paging call came in; the identity of a caller; the type of call (such as an E-mail page request or other); the page priority requested by the caller; or the text of the page request. Such information can be used by the application for whatever purposes the developer desires. For example, the information could be used to recreate a message if it were lost, to help facilitate the processing of replies to messages from a pager, or for general record keeping purposes regarding the flow of information through the system.
A usual requirement is that the application databases be real-time databases that can store data for potentially thousands or millions of transactions. It is also desirable that the data be accessible very quickly so that the application can process many calls per second. Development of this type of database has been a large burden on application developers. It often requires significant development time, which slows the process to market, and it requires designers to have advanced knowledge of real-time embedded systems designs. The present invention is directed to providing a method of developing applications that overcomes the foregoing and other disadvantages. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method of tracking message data for an application without requiring the application to have an application database.